


No Sleep in Brooklyn

by htbthomas



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Found Family, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Post-Canon, Secret Keepers, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:40:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htbthomas/pseuds/htbthomas
Summary: Ganke could have never guessed how much sleep he'd lose being roommates with Spider-Man.
Relationships: Ganke Lee & Miles Morales
Comments: 31
Kudos: 204
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	No Sleep in Brooklyn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SoVeryAverageMe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoVeryAverageMe/gifts).



> Thank you to GlassesOfJustice and Katayla for the beta!
> 
> Title adapted from "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" by The Beastie Boys.

Ganke can hardly sleep. He hasn't been this distracted since he first came up with the thesis for his paper on quantum entanglement. Granted, that was just last week, but still. His brain has been going a million miles an hour since Miles swung down from the ceiling and gave him a fistbump.

He is roommates with Spider-Man.

_Spider-Man!_

Well, the new one, anyway. Or one out of many, if what he saw was real and not just a product of his study-addled brain. He's gonna ask about that. He's gonna ask about _So. Many. Things._

He looks up toward Miles' bunk. He's sleeping, like nothing is out of the ordinary, like he's just an average student at Brooklyn Visions Academy. Ganke knows Miles is sleeping, because he can hear the snoring, and he's checked a couple times to be sure. Just a quick check, he doesn't want to come off as a creepy stalker or anything.

But he totally would understand if Miles was out at night, stopping crimes and saving the world and what not. He probably couldn't talk about it when he got back either, which would make Ganke's mind spin even faster wondering just which crimes Miles had stopped. So he should probably just try to go back to sleep. But it's gotten quiet suddenly. Can Miles teleport?

Maybe one last check...

He slowly eases out of his bunk and winces at the tiny creak the floor makes when he puts his weight on it. He freezes, waits for the sound of snoring, then relaxes at a particularly loud snort. So he's still here. Whew. But Ganke can't help just looking—it could be a recording or something, right?

He puts a foot on the ladder (Miles probably doesn't need to use one, Ganke thinks with a secret smile) and lifts up just enough to see Miles' face...

Miles' eyes pop open, bright and white even in the darkness. "What?"

Ganke stumbles back with a shout, crashing to the floor. "Agh, sorry, sorry!" he stage-whispers, already worried about their next door neighbors and the boarding staff coming down to check on them. "I was just... wondering if you were here, or out there, you know..." He makes a swinging motion with his hand.

Miles, who is now up on his elbows to look down on him, one eyebrow raised, says, "Uh, okay...?"

Ganke clambers to his feet. "I thought maybe you went out at night to, um, fight bad guys, or whatever. Like in the comic books," he adds, nodding toward the pile he has on his desk. 

"Uh, yeah, not tonight, man. I'm _exhausted_." Miles flops back down on the bed with a huff, arm over his eyes.

"Really?" Ganke climbs a couple of rungs on the ladder in his excitement. "Because you just had to break up a major crime syndicate?"

"No... because I had to study for that history test and I was so far behind on the reading."

"Oh." Now that he thinks about it, he does remember seeing Miles in the lounge, head bent over a stack of books. Ganke deflates a little—of course Miles wasn't constantly out doing his Spider-Man thing. He was in middle school. He couldn't be out all hours and not have anyone in the school notice.

"But..."

Ganke perks up.

"I did bust a drug dealer the other day. Just left him webbed up to a light pole until the police came. My dad was the first on the scene."

Miles sounds proud, and he should be. This is the kind of street-level justice that the city needs. "Awesome! Wait—your dad is a cop?"

"Yeah."

"And he knows? That's totally amaz—"

"No. He doesn't." The pride in Miles' voice gets a worried edge. "I'm not really sure how to tell him."

Ganke is quiet for a few moments, processing. The heroes in the comics usually keep their true identities secret to protect their families. He'd forgotten that part in his excitement. "So... who else knows?"

"In this universe?" Miles begins, raising a slew of new questions in Ganke's mind. "Now? Only two people." There's a sadness in that answer, one that he's not sure he has the right to ask about yet. "And you're one of them."

Ganke can't breathe for a second, he's so stunned. He... is Spider-Man's secret keeper? There's another person, but still! He's going to be the very best secret keeper ever, covering for him when he's out fighting crime, and making sure he doesn't push himself too hard and—

Wait.

Is that snoring?

Ganke must have been too lost in his own thoughts to notice that Miles had fallen back to sleep. That's okay. A Spider-Man needs his rest.

It's only right that at least one of them is able to sleep that night.

* * *

Ganke screams with joy before clapping a hand over his mouth, the one that isn't fiercely clinging to Miles' back. Sure, Miles has taken him swinging around the city a couple of times before, but it just doesn't get old. He doesn't think it ever will. "Sorry!" he says into Miles' ear, or the place where the Spider-Man mask covers his ear. He's not sure Miles can hear him over the whistling of the wind.

Miles swings in an extra-wide arc to land them both on the top of a gargoyle jutting out from the Chrysler Building. He sits with ease on the edge of its mouth, one leg swinging free. And under his leg, is that... one of Miles' artwork stickers? Ganke settles himself close to the base. Even though he knows Miles would never let anything happen to him, he doesn't quite have the nerve to sit anywhere with a sixty-one story drop to the pavement below.

Miles tosses him a paper bag, making sure Ganke catches it before opening his own. He pulls back the bottom half of his mask, pops a full half of a hotdog into his mouth and starts to chew. "Mm, needed that," he says, crumbs tumbling from his mouth.

Ganke takes his own smaller bite. He needed this, too. The school cafeteria is okay, but sometimes nothing will do like a street cart hot dog.

When Miles is done with his food—in record time—he asks, "What're you in the mood for tonight? Sky's the limit!" Then he cocks his head. "Or whatever my webs can attach to is the limit."

"I dunno." Miles has taken him to most of the places he's asked about in the first few outings. Top of the Empire State Building , top of the Statue of Liberty, across the canopy of the trees in Central Park, looking down on Times Square... "You decide."

"Naw, man. You're the one who beat me on that math test! It's _your_ pick."

Ganke shakes his head. "Only because you were out patrolling and didn't have as much time to study."

"Oh, I had plenty of time. I could have studied while I was out. It was an extremely slow night."

It reminds Ganke of the time they'd been out a couple weeks ago, just goofing off, and it had been anything but a slow night. Miles had sensed a robbery in progress—when Miles asked about it later, Miles described it as some sort of extrasensory danger sense, like a premonition. He'd dropped Ganke off on a roof with a promise to return soon, but that had killed their plans for the rest of the night.

So what could they do that Miles could leave in a hurry if he needed to, but wouldn't leave Ganke in the lurch? "Well... I have kind of wanted to see _Hadestown_..."

Miles frowns so hard Ganke can see his forehead crinkle through the mask. "Huh? How can me being Spider-Man help you with that? Can't you just get tickets?"

"Yeah, if I wanna pay a hundred bucks a ticket and still sit in the nosebleed section of the far left balcony. I don't get much of an allowance, Miles." He's on scholarship and his mom works in a restaurant.

"You're telling me." 

"I have a little saved, and I keep playing the ticket lottery, but I never win..." He trails off. 

"Wait." He pulls back his mask to peer at Ganke. "You want me to... sneak you in or something?"

Suddenly Ganke blushes, all the way up to his hairline. "No. It's stupid, and wrong, and probably, no, definitely illegal, I don't know what I was thinking..." His words tumble over each other. "Forget I ever said it. Forget I even _thought_ it."

Miles scoots over, close, and puts his gloved hand on Ganke's arm. "It's okay. I've had a lot of the same thoughts since I got my powers. The things I could do if I wanted to... You know I can turn invisible, right?"

"Yeah." Ganke sits straight up with a shocking thought. "You didn't ever—!"

"Naw. But I thought it. You name it, I thought it." He looks out toward the lights of the city for a long moment, mind going somewhere Ganke would give anything to know. "But thinking and doing aren't the same thing." He turns back to Ganke. "It's what you do that matters."

Ganke gives him a watery smile. "I'll try to remember that."

"C'mon," Miles says, taking Ganke's hand and bringing them both to their feet. "Let's go back to the room, watch something on your computer."

It honestly turns out to be a pretty great night by the end of it. And a couple weeks later, he finds a pair of _Hadestown_ tickets on his desk with a note, "Better luck when two people play the lottery. :) —M"

* * *

"I'm serious, dude, Malang Cow is the best candy, hands down," Ganke says. "I know it's hard to find, but you have to try it. It's like Starburst on steroids."

"Hey, I'll try anything once!" Miles laughs. They're walking this time, in street clothes, into Koreatown. Now that they've been friends for a few months, he feels bad asking Miles to just swing them everywhere. Plus he's worried that if people start noticing the new Spider-Man is always with this one Korean kid, there are going to be questions. Ones he doesn't really want to answer. Especially not at the business end of a knife.

"Sweet. There's this place over on West 32nd Street that usually has it, let's—"

He stops, looks around. The streets are starting to empty, all for a reason he can't immediately determine. Miles is turned away, a strange expression on his face. "I gotta..." Then he disappears.

Whoa! He's never seen Miles do that without the suit on. It's not like his powers are dependent on the suit, it's just—weird to see it happen out of the blue. "Miles? Are you still there?"

There's no answer. And then he starts to hear screams from a distance. There's something happening, in the general direction of the Empire State Building. Something big.

Ganke ducks into one of the stores along the street, pulling up his phone and the Daily Bugle news app. There's the story—breaking news about an attack by Scorpion. And as he watches, Spider-Man swings into frame, landing in a crouch to face his foe. 

Ganke watches the fight, his fingers gripping the screen tightly, knuckles going white. He wants to believe that Miles has this handled. But he's a thirteen year old kid, just like Ganke. And this is no liquor store robbery, or purse theft. Superpowers or not, this looks terrifying.

He watches Miles flip around the screen, narrowly evading Scorpion's bladed chain, sending webbing out to capture the villain and spin him around. Ganke can't hear anything—the cameraman is too far away to catch anything but the sound of the fearful crowd. Somehow Miles executes an impossible leap and the webbing goes taut, pulling Scorpion off his feet and into the air, dangling helplessly from a street lamp.

The screen fills with a multitude of flashes from cameras, both tourists and press. Then Miles is leaping away out of frame, too fast for the camera to track. 

Ganke goes back out to the still mostly deserted street, and leans heavily against a wall, not able to look away from the screen of his phone. The journalist covering the event for the Bugle app is doing a slow motion play-by-play. Ganke doesn't want to leave this spot, because Miles might come back here. He could go get the candy and meet Miles back in their room, maybe send a text to let him know...?

Then he sees it, in the play-by-play. One of Scorpion's blades swipes out and cuts into Spider-Man's calf muscle before continuing in its arc. Ganke gasps, his hand going to his mouth. He hadn't seen it during the heat of the battle, hadn't noticed anything off about Miles' fighting. But would he have known Miles was injured even if he were right there?

He immediately switches to his texting app, trying to type quickly, but his thumbs are shaking with adrenaline and anxiety. _dude are you ok? did he get you?_ He doesn't want to be too specific. This phone isn't secure, not by a long shot, and they've never talked about Miles' secret identity anyplace where they thought someone might be listening, in person or electronically.

Ganke watches the screen for several minutes, tense with worry. No response, no 'Read' notification or even three dots to show Miles is typing. Augh, why didn't they ever set up Find My Phone or something like that before this? He starts to pace, feeling completely helpless. Ganke can't even call Miles' dad, because Miles' dad doesn't know. What if Miles is somewhere all alone, unconscious, bleeding out, and no one knows where he is, or who he is...

His phone chirps with a message and he nearly fumbles it to the street before catching it. It's Miles, thank god. _I'm ok. went back to the room. meet u there?_

Ganke starts to sag with relief, then freezes. What if Miles is really hurt? Because he can't tell the truth in a text... He doesn't even notice how long it takes to get back to the school or which route he takes. He throws open the door, huffing from taking the stairs at a run. "Miles? Miles!"

Miles is sitting cross-legged on his bunk, head tilted and one eyebrow raised. "Yeah?"

Ganke closes the door behind him. "Oh my god, I was so worried! I saw on the video that Sco—" He drops his voice to a whisper. "—Scorpion's blades cut you. I didn't know where you were, and you weren't answering and I thought you might be bleeding out somewhere, or...?" He looks up at where Miles is sitting, no sign of bandages or blood. He climbs up a few rungs on the ladder. " _Did_ he cut you?" 

Miles rubs a hand across the back of his head, grimacing awkwardly. "Yeah, but it wasn't deep. Well, actually it was kinda deep, but it's okay. I heal quickly. That's one of my powers. Remember?"

Ganke finishes climbing up and sits heavily. "Huh. I guess I do remember. Now." 

"It's pretty useful, with all the dangers of superheroing. And hiding it," Miles says. "You wanna see it?"

"Really? I dunno," Ganke says, torn between squeamishness and curiosity. Curiosity wins; he is into science after all. "Okay."

Miles peels up his pant leg, and reveals a long scratch, no worse than the time Ganke scraped his leg on the corner of a coffee table once. "See?"

"That's it?"

"Tomorrow morning that'll probably be gone, too. It's pretty cool. If you stare at it long enough, you can actually see the skin knitting together and—"

Ganke throws his hands up over his eyes, his squeamishness kicking in. "Okay, okay! Maybe another time!"

Miles laughs and claps him on the arms. But his fingers move up and tighten on Ganke's shoulder in reassurance. "Sorry I scared you, man."

"It's fine. Glad you're okay." And he is glad. He'd been having so much fun getting to know Miles and everything he could do, that he'd never stopped to consider what it might be like if he _hadn't_ been okay.

That night Ganke finds it just as hard to sleep as the night he first found out Miles' secret.

* * *

"Where did you say we were going?" Ganke asks. They're far from Brooklyn now. Miles just explained that he can't really even use his Spider-powers because the buildings aren't tall enough to hide that he's carrying someone. So they took a bus to a train back to a bus again and now they're walking from the stop in a residential neighborhood. The suspense is killing him.

"Just to dinner. At a friend's house."

"You have friends... in Queens?"

"Like that's so strange?"

"A little, dude."

It's a little more strange that he refuses to explain. But it's dinner, so it can't be all bad. Unless...

"We're really going to a dinner, right?"

"Yep. Home cooked and everything. Maybe even pie."

Ganke's mouth goes comically round. "Okay, forget I asked any questions. If there's pie at the end, it doesn't matter."

"Good," he says with a gesture to the house on their right. "'Cause we're here."

Ganke looks the house over. Nothing special. Pretty similar to most of the others on the street. There's a mailbox that says "Parker" out front. Now why does that ring a bell...?

"Miles?" a voice calls from the doorway, and Ganke turns back to look. It's an older woman, maybe in her fifties. "I thought that was you! You're early," she tuts, closing the door behind her. She walks toward them, holding out her arms for a hug, which Miles gives her, readily. "This must be Ganke. He's just as you described him."

"And you must be...?" Ganke answers, at a loss.

Miles steps out of the hug and clears his throat. "Uh, sorry. This is May. She's the—" He nods significantly. "—other person who _knows_."

Ganke walks in the front door, mind spinning. Of course! May Parker. She's the aunt of Peter Parker, the original Spider-Man. Her name and story were all over the news when he died. But he guesses it's been long enough since it happened that the press isn't hounding her and Peter's widow anymore. He glances at Miles, thinks about the battle with Scorpion last week. If those blades had struck Miles a little higher, and he hadn't gotten out of the way in time... could his fast healing really heal... everything?

Clearly not, or Peter Parker would still be alive. Ganke shudders.

"Oh, Ganke, let's close that door," May says, shooing him in. "You look like you're chilled to the bone! Dinner's almost ready and you can warm up on the couch."

He lets himself be ushered in while he's looking around the room in fascination. At some point, a cup of hot cocoa appears in his hands and cookies are set on the coffee table. When his thoughts break, he notices that Miles and May are talking in the kitchen while he helps her set the table. But Ganke just can't get over how _normal_ everything is in the house. There are photos on the mantle, homey decorations, an afghan on the back of the couch, an older TV set in the corner, not even a flatscreen. It reminds him of his own aunt's place, minus the smell of her amazing bibimbap. You'd never be able to tell that this woman raised one of the most famous superheroes in New York, or even the world.

But, he reminds himself, that's the point, right?

Nothing about his and Miles' shared dorm room gives away the fact that one of them is stopping criminals big and small on a regular basis. It looks, and smells, like a typical middle schooler's room. Nothing to make it stand out even to the pickiest boarding monitor.

"Ganke?" May says, "Dinner's on."

And they spend dinner talking about completely normal things, like how school is going, and how about this weather, and what are you doing for the next school break. Nothing about Peter or Miles or supervillains, though he's _dying_ to ask. But their phones are still on, though facedown on the table. He knows they have to be careful. Maybe if everyone shut them off, or locked them in some sort of safe—but then what if the paparazzi have bugged the place somehow, just biding their time for their next scoop...?

May pushes back her plate, and Ganke realizes that he's finished his, even had seconds, without noticing. "Time for the pie," she says, "And then I'd love for you boys to see what I've done with my garden."

"Sounds good," Miles says.

"Okay," Ganke adds, but really just wants to explore the rest of the house. Maybe there's a secret room upstairs. Or Peter's old bedroom kept in perfect condition from the days when _he_ was a teenaged superhero. Ganke would give anything to see that.

They amble out to the garden in the backyard, stomachs overfilled with pie. But instead of stopping to talk about her prize tulips, May keeps walking, all the way to a shed in the backyard. "I keep my best specimens in here." She pulls out a key, unlocks the padlock, and there's a sudden beam of light as the doorway transforms into a high-tech elevator door with a spider-symbol on the front.

Ganke's mouth drops open.

Miles chuckles and pats his arm. "Thought you might like this."

As the doors close and they start to descend, May says, "Miles has been telling me that you've been worrying about him a lot."

Ganke blushes, "Yeah, well, I—"

"I understand, dear. That's the whole reason this place exists. Once I knew about Peter, I would have done anything to keep him safe..." Her voice trails off. He knows what she's thinking. Even _with_ all of this, he still died in the line of duty.

Ganke looks around at all the gadgets, the vehicles, the suits, how completely futuristic and comic book-like everything is, and his mind starts racing a million miles an hour. His words tumble out, "We couldn't build this at school, no way, but maybe if you're willing to help us, we could trick out my computer to look like a gaming computer with multiple monitors and a headset, but really it's a command center tapped into all the networks and closed-circuit cameras, and—"

He stops, and looks at May and Miles, who are wearing almost identical fond expressions. 

"I mean, is that something you could help me do?" he asks quietly, trying to tamp down his excitement.

May turns to Miles, putting an arm around his shoulders. "You're right, sweetheart. He was the perfect choice."

* * *

"Police have picked up the crew and are loading them into patrol cars," Ganke tells Miles into his headset. "Looks like your route home is free and clear. Great work, dude!"

"Thanks," Miles says, sounding exhausted but proud. "I am gonna literally fall asleep the second my head hits that pillow."

"I know what you mean," Ganke says. And he does fall asleep right away, into a deep, contented sleep. After he tucks Miles in and checks on him just one more time, of course.


End file.
